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Show Information
Episode Number: 90
Date: June 2, 2025
Duration: 13:31
Host Contact Information
Host: Justin Deese
Website: JustinDeese.com
Contact: Justin@JustinDeese.com
Guest Contact Information
Guest: Jeff Gabelsberg
Company: Jolly Goat Garage Doors
Guest Website: https://jollygoatgaragedoors.com/
Summary
In this episode of the Freedom Blueprint podcast, Justin Deese interviews Jeff, the owner of Jolly Goat Garage Doors, discussing the evolution of the garage door industry, the importance of branding, and the unique market opportunities in smaller towns. Jeff shares insights from his 30 years in the industry, the challenges of rebranding, and how community engagement through their mascot, a goat, has positively impacted their business. The conversation highlights the significance of quality service and the potential for growth in the garage door market.
Takeaways
- The garage door industry has seen significant growth in recent years.
- Rebranding can transform a business’s market presence and customer recognition.
- Community engagement through unique branding can attract customers.
- Smaller towns often have unmet needs for quality garage door services.
- Quality service and customer relationships are key to business success.
- Technology is playing a larger role in the garage door industry.
- The importance of having a memorable brand name cannot be overstated.
- Higher-end products can lead to better customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Understanding market demands in rural areas can lead to business expansion.
- The journey of entrepreneurship involves continuous learning and adaptation.
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction to the Garage Door Industry
- 03:03 The Evolution of Jolly Goat Garage Doors
- 05:59 Branding and Community Engagement
- 08:49 Market Opportunities in Smaller Towns
- 11:50 Conclusion and Future Aspirations
Keywords
garage doors, Jolly Goat, branding, community engagement, market opportunities, service industry, technology, business growth, customer service, home improvement
Transcript
Justin Deese (00:04)
All right, welcome back to another episode of Freedom Blueprint podcast. This one we’re actually doing live at the Power Profit Workshop hosted by my wife, the virtual CFO. Jeff, appreciate you coming and hanging out, Thanks, Justin. Glad to be here, man. I really appreciate it. again, this is live at the show. Jeff got here early. Jeff is in the garage door space. And what’s funny is I was talking to a couple of guys yesterday.
And I said every time we do these events, it’s always the plumbers that show up first. And you and your brother showed up, or the first ones. We’re here to make a difference, man. We want let people know the garage doors are here, man. So they showed up first. That industry is so fascinating to me. And it’s funny because there’s so many times now that I realize how large it’s growing.
I need this gadget, need that gadget. Yeah, it’s fascinating to me too. I’ve been in the industry for over 30 years now and it’s fascinating to me every day just because of the way it’s grown and the growth and I’m one of those guys that ⁓ just like a lot of the plumbers and HVAC guys out there that started in a truck and were just a helper and I’ve seen this industry grow so much but in the past five to 10 years it’s just insane what’s happened to this industry and you’re right, technology’s a big piece of that too. Yeah, and even like new home construction,
and like Chris and I just had a house built by developer and you know, don’t think about it, certain things and then you get in the house and you’re like, what do mean I gotta push the button and make the door open? I need it on an app like everything else in my life. Just like my AC works, just like everything else. need an app for that. So let’s back up a little bit. So you said 30 years, so give us a little bit about your company, where you’re located. ⁓
how long you’ve owned the business, Cliff Note version. Yeah, absolutely. So I actually started a company called Garage Door Solutions in 2013 and we’re based in Oklahoma City. And then we rebranded the company in 2023 to Jolly Goat Garage Doors. And we’re still based out of Oklahoma City, but we are kind of trying to do our best to take over the states. And now we’ve got multiple locations in the state of Oklahoma. Nice.
And so for anybody who doesn’t follow your company on social media, they should, because not only are they Jolly Goat as a brand, they actually have a goat. Absolutely. We got three of them. do you really? Yeah. So does the goat live at your shop? It’s a great question. We get that question all the time. But yes, so we’ve got three. They’re actually triplets. So we’ve got two girls and a boy, Jolly. He’s our mascot. He’s kind of the one.
He’s kind of our special kid. But he’s amazing. ⁓ And they do, yeah, they live right at the shop. So they’re very, I like to call them very domesticated city goats. So they’re very well taken care of. They’ve never been out in the rain. ⁓
starts a sprinkle they start freaking out so we have to let them inside but we’ve got big what is all this dropping down yeah they think the world’s coming to an end you know and they’ll start screaming but when it’s cold outside it gets super cold or something we bring them in and they’ve got these infrared heaters and they’ve got these big pins like big cattle pins and stuff that we keep them in inside the shop we’ve got a pretty good size shop so now part of it’s a
dedicated just for the goats. We call them our kids. the whole team has adopted them and they’re very well taken care of. So who gets to clean the pen? Is that an apprentice job? That’s a Jeff G job. So that’s on me. And I wouldn’t put that on anybody else on the team. There’s been a couple times where I’ve been gone for an extended amount of time where the team stepped up and done it. But that’s something that’s on my list. And honestly, Justin, I really enjoy doing it. It’s kind of fun to me. So yeah, it’s something that’s
that’s
on my list of duties. Well, and I think that’s neat from, you know, kind of go out in the community and there’s one thing to have like a giant mascot that’s stuffed and there’s another thing to have a live animal. Yeah. Like a rolling petting zoo. Yeah, it’s huge. know, when we do events, ⁓ Jolly’s really good. We put him on a, he’s got a harness and put him on a leash and he just goes everywhere with us and he’s very, very good at it.
So when we do home shows or events and things like that, we take him with us. I mean, sometimes at these home shows, I mean, we’ll get him out there. On the home shows that are indoor, we’ll just bring him for a couple hours at a time. But if we do an outdoor show, then he will set up a pen and we’ll have like, you if we have a 10 by 10 example, you know, for our booth, we’ll do a 10 by 10 next to it also. So we’ll set up a 10 by 10 pen.
leave him out there the whole time and then we’ll go walk around with him every couple hours and people just go crazy over it. So now how did that start? Like you, how did you shift from the goat? Like how did, how did that even, that journey even begin? With the brand, mean? Yeah. So we were, we started to, back in 2020 is whenever we started to, ⁓ kind of my mindset started changing and I needed to grow this business and I knew that it was possible or realized it was possible. And so one of the pieces to that, there were several pieces, but one of them was
We need a brand that can help us get to the next level. And ⁓ our previous name, Garage Door Solutions, was just very, as those in the industry would call it, just very bland. was vanilla. It was very vanilla, yeah. And we had issues because there was us, Garage Door Solutions. There was also a company called Garage Door Systems, Garage Door Services, Garage Door Specialists, all in my market.
And so you can only imagine what we were all fighting against each other for keywords on Google. And they were so expensive. And so these things were, these were all little pieces that went into it. And then I talked to a couple people that changed their name ⁓ and went with this cool colors and stuff. And so I started talking to them. And they were HVAC plumbing garage door guys. And they’re like, well, we didn’t really change our name. We rebranded. And I was like, well, what does that mean? Tell me about that. And so that’s kind of where it got started.
And then we got introduced to some pretty awesome people that helped us with the brand and get that piece done. It’s amazing the difference it makes versus the…
the plain Jane name. Oh yeah. I know even like for us, our business here, Paradise, like when we were creating it and branding it, was like, how do we make the most out of what we got? So was Tiki bars and Hawaii, you the guys wear Hawaiian shirts. I love that. And you got to it. Yeah. Well, and then what it’s so memorable, right? Like anybody that goes to that home show, they’re like, Oh, did you see the goat guys? Like, Oh, the goat guys that do the garage doors. Like,
Instantly memorable. They’re not gonna forget that. And the kids, know, it’s great because when we set up the pen, the kids just flock to Jolly and then the parents are just standing there talking to us. Hey, since you’re here, let me tell you about this amazing thing we got going on. Exactly. Exactly. So it works out really well. Really well. That’s fantastic. And it’s a brand that we can, we now own that we can do anything. We can take it as big as we want. Garage door solutions. We were very limited. It really was holding us back.
⁓ and so jollygoat yeah I can just do anything we want with it yeah jollygoats awesome and such a brand so you guys have you guys have a couple locations now yeah we’ve got we’ve got multiple actually so we’ve got three ⁓ main showroom locations in Oklahoma one that’s north one that’s central and one that’s south okay and and with the two the one that’s north we just recently opened up we had picked up ⁓
acquired a small company up in a town called Enid, Oklahoma, which is an area we’ve been wanting to get into for quite a while. And we really like to focus on what I like to call these boutique markets, right? There’s a lot of companies out there that just, hey, let’s go to this city and get started. There’s a lot of people there. Well, we’ve found that there’s a huge need for our services in these rural areas and in some of these smaller towns. So we’re really able to capitalize on that in a way that really has kind of blown me away how much business we can get out of some of these small towns.
and how the need for our services and our sales process has just been neglected there for years and years. We get into these smaller markets and people are saying, I’m glad there’s finally somebody here that can service us. We don’t have to two or three weeks to get done.
The biggest thing is, since we’re in the garage door space, we sell garage doors. Well, most people in the garage door space, most other companies just fix garage doors. And so they just go band-aid stuff for years. Broke, fix, huh? Yeah, exactly. so part of our sales process is always talk to people about a new door and their actual wants and needs. And so ⁓ what we found in these smaller markets is that we’re just replacing doors all the time. And nobody has been replacing doors unless they get completely damaged or driven through or something like that.
So we’ve been very, very happy. It’s been successful business model for sure. So as you guys are thinking of operation domination throughout the world, ⁓ we have a severe lack here in beautiful Pensacola, Florida. In our shop down the road, when we first bought the building, I just wanted to be able to push a button and the door open. I didn’t want somebody to come in and go through that whole thing. I just wanted to be able to push the button. And it took forever for us to get someone to come out.
And then the guy came out and gave me a price for the door, the button, the door that lifts up sideways. And he gave me the price and I looked at him and was like, you can’t be making any money. Yeah. So pricing, and I feel bad as a business owner. I don’t want the guy not make money. And then the second there was a problem, I could never get him on the phone.
disappeared like you put a sticker on it, which was great, but then the next step is you have to answer the phone or return a call or text. So absolutely. And then here, Kate and Kate can probably test to this. know, obviously we have hurricanes. And when we had our last hurricane in 20, when was Sally? 2020, 2020, 2021, 2021.
I mean we were on the water. mean we blew all of our garage doors, all of my neighbors garage, like everybody’s garage doors are floating down. Yeah, absolutely. it took to find someone to replace it. I believe it. Months. Yeah. So I think you guys are in such a good industry and it just.
I’m shocked that 30 years ago it wasn’t just the new construction. Was there actual service then? There was, yeah. There was still a lot of repairs going on and that’s all I ever knew was really the service side of it. New construction was really never my game. I was living in Florida for a little while and working for a company in North Florida that…
⁓ we did focus on new construction. then of course, when the market in 08 and all that stuff tanked and Florida was hit harder than anybody else, and we immediately lost 90 % of our business overnight. And so I knew that once I did start my own company, I was never gonna focus on new construction. So that’s less than 2 % of what we do currently is new construction. So service and replacements is really where it’s at for us.
again, good market for you to go to all these new neighborhoods and be like, hey, you want a fancy garage? That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Because none of them put that in. and that’s a great point. And for Jolly Go, we’re not the cheapest ones out there. also not the most expensive. But we’re definitely on the higher end. So we do always push higher end products.
People know people starting to understand when they see Jolly Goat. They’re pulling up. We’re not gonna be the cheap guys We’re not gonna be that guy that comes out that you had to just you know is there for ten minutes and doesn’t call you back You know, it’s not gonna be us right when in part of our sales process even our service technicians I mean they’re on the job for an hour maybe before they even pull the tools off their truck, right? And so and so that’s that’s something that’s been successful for us as well. Very cool Well, I appreciate you guys coming here being here ⁓
I’m excited to keep learning more about your business. awesome. Yeah, we’re excited to be here. Listen, your wife has been amazing for us. It’s been ⁓ quite a journey with her and helping us understand our numbers and getting everything dialed in. And we wouldn’t be where we are today without her services. And so we’re very excited to be here and learn some more stuff for sure. Awesome. We’ll appreciate it. And we’ll continue the party. Awesome. Thanks, Justin. Talk to you soon. Thanks, man. Good. Cool.
It sounds like creeping in on us. Love it.